“Well, that’s the thing. Maybe there isn’t… a serial killer.”
Jake looked up, watched DeLuca take a long pull of coffee. “You have two seconds before I-”
“Kylie Howarth. Is the Longfellow vic’s name. But she’s a suicide.”
Jake stood slowly, closing his laptop. He sat down again, his metal chair creaking a complaint. He stared at DeLuca, calculating what that would mean. Longfellow had been the first body. The first domino of the so-called bridge killings. The beginning of the hysteria. Suicide?
I knew it. There was no Bridge Killer.
DeLuca came into the room, flipped around Jake’s swivel guest chair, sat with one leg on each side. Draped his leather-jacketed arms across the back of the seat. Plunked his coffee on Jake’s desk.
“We think,” DeLuca said.
Jake slammed his palm on his desk, sloshing a mini-puddle of coffee onto the wooden surface. “You kidding me? What’re you talking about, D? You on drugs? There’s no room for maybe in this business.”
DeLuca made the time-out sign. “Is there room for ‘probably’? Hear me out. Her parents called. Kylie Howarth, K-y-l-i-e, is their daughter. They’re from-Louisville. St. Louis. Someplace like that, it’s in my notebook. Wife’s, like, a city councilor. Husband’s rich. Anyway, they’d been out of town in, ah, you know, Europe. Switzerland, someplace like that. Skiing. So they didn’t get the letter. Till they got back.”
“The-?” Jake wrote down the name Kylie.
“Letter. She’s sorry, she let them down, she can’t face it all anymore. Apparently she had some problems. She’d run off to Boston, poor-little-rich-girl type of thing, they hardly heard from her. So it didn’t concern them when, you know. They were out of touch. So she sends them this letter. Saying she was gonna ‘fly.’ Didn’t know they were gone. Apparently.”
“But how did they, I mean why-?”
DeLuca blotted the spilled coffee with a handkerchief, stuffed it back in his jeans pocket. “The letter was postmarked Boston. They called the cops. Kurtz took it. She told me about it. I told her I’d fill you in.”
Jake’s intercom buzzed again. “Jake? Cadet Kurtz is-”
“Send her in, please,” Jake said. “So how do we know it’s her? Kylie How-?”
“Howarth. We don’t,” DeLuca said. “Description matches, though. Everything matches. Description, timing, ‘flying’-you know, off a bridge. The parents are getting a plane A-sap, bringing the letter. Could be here today, they’ll let us know. Then they’ll have to see Dr. A in the ME’s office. ID the body.”
“Bad news for them,” Jake said. “Hate that. But guess it’s good for us.”
“Yup.” DeLuca nodded, swiveling the chair slightly back and forth. “Thing is.”
“Thing is what?” Jake said.
“Detectives?” Cadet Kurtz, also carrying a Dunkin’s cup, peered around Jake’s door. She held out a sheaf of papers, but looked at DeLuca. “So you told him? I was going to call you, sir, but Paul-uh, Detective DeLuca-said that-”
“All set,” Jake said. He motioned her to hand over the documents. “Good work.”
DeLuca raised his cup at her. “Kurtz, I was about to tell Detective Brogan what you said the Howarths told you about their daughter’s employment history. Where she’d applied for a job.”
Jake began to read. He held the pages, midair.
“No way,” he said. He looked at DeLuca, then at Kurtz, then back again, trying to read their faces. “You two are frickin’ kidding me.”
41
Two missed calls, a text, and an e-mail. Jane clicked her car door open, alone in the Register’s parking lot, turned on the key to get the heat started. I have to sleep. She would see who’d called, drive to her apartment, then answer, if she absolutely had to, when she got home. Then, sleep.
She clicked in her access code. If she didn’t got some rest, she’d never make it through the Gable interview. Lucky she had already done her research. Lucky she didn’t have to look good on camera for it.
Voice mail. “You have two new calls. To listen, press one.”
“Jane Elizabeth?”
Her father’s voice. Was something wrong?
There was a pause. Her dad hated leaving messages. Something must be wrong. Lissa? Her wedding? His health? “Your sister showed me the article in the Boston Register this morning. Online.”
Another pause.
“Nice job, honey,” her father said. He coughed, cleared his throat. “I wish your mother could have seen it.”
There was a beat of silence, then a click. Her father never said good-bye on the phone. Why did she always feel tears, hearing his voice? She was tired. Just tired. She pushed 1 for the other message.
This caller’s voice was so shrill, so tense, she almost didn’t recognize it.
“We have to talk, Jane,” Moira’s recorded voice said. “Owen just got home. Now he says-well, first he told me he was in Springfield, but now he’s saying he spent the night in Worcester. Worcester! That’s more than forty-five minutes from here. Why not simply come home? Why not? I’ll tell you why. He actually had that girl in the car. In his car. I saw her, she got out, preened herself in front of me, all that hair and… ah. That incredible b-”
Jane could hear Moira stop for breath, imagined her trying to calm herself. Did she hear the clink of ice?
“We need to talk, Jane. Did you see this person in Springfield? Why did Owen go to Worcester? It’s terrible, Jane, it’s terrible. You’re an outsider, reliable, the only one I can trust. You know someone is going to notice. And when they do, it’ll be too late. Call me, please.”
Jane stared at the phone. Hit the Save button. And stared again. So much for Jane’s feigned ignorance. Sounded like Moira, too, had seen the other woman.
She turned off the ignition. She had to go back upstairs and tell Alex.
She turned on the ignition. She had to get home. She could call Alex later and they could figure out what to do. If Moira was drunk, or delusional, or scheming, or sincere, or whatever all the other possibilities were. Nothing more was going to happen today. Nothing she could do anything about, anyway.
Who’d texted? She clicked a few buttons. Amy. “Another Sat nite by URself? How ’bout Hot Alex? CL me.” If Amy only knew. And she hadn’t even told her about Alex’s on-again, off-again wedding ring. If she did, Amy’d be on the hunt for bridesmaids’ dresses.
Jane yawned, her whole face stretched with the desire for sleep, her eyes closing. She covered her face with her palms, then batted her cheeks to wake herself up.
Next, the e-mail. From Jake.
Shoot. She clicked it open. Stared at it. Two words: Kenna Wilkes.
It was cold, and beautiful, and it felt like she was flying. Holly stretched to her longest stride, the music filling her head, a blast of salt air filling her lungs and making her so powerful. She was running and running, not away from anything, not anymore, but toward her perfect future. The post office had been open on Sunday, perfect, package number two now on the way.
Odd that Jane hadn’t mentioned the first package. Maybe the mail had messed up. Maybe it hadn’t arrived? She knew the address was correct, she’d chosen Jane carefully and copied her address at Channel 11 from the Web before she’d moved to Boston. She’d even written the mailing labels in advance.
Holly took a deep breath, trying not to fret. She’d only mailed it-when? Like, the other day. Maybe Jane hadn’t seen it yet. Maybe Jane was ignoring it? Testing her? Or maybe she didn’t recognize her from the photos. At the rally, Holly’d been so excited to see Jane! And thought she’d come on purpose, hoping Holly would be there. Funny, she didn’t have a cameraman with her. TV reporters usually did.